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They say children should spend a maximum of three days at a funeral - and only if the deceased is a member of their immediate family.

In a report on Stuff, Amanda Saxton has examined the difficulties Pasifika families have balancing family, church and culture with the reality of living in New Zealand.

Purotu, from Pukapuka in the Cook Islands, has been a butcher, shoemaker and social worker.

She told Saxton that while funerals are a chance to reconnect with tradition and far-flung aunts, their length and frequency can sabotage a child's education.

Kaio told her that he tells parents that as much as he loves to see their children at church, they lose confidence when they're away from the classroom for too long.

He said he can do 20 funerals a year and the same people attend many of them.

Former secondary school teacher ​Siliva Gaugatao​, originally from Samoa, is doing doctoral research at Auckland University. He focuses on Pasifika staff and student engagement.

Looking at eight years of the ministry's truancy data, Gaugatao is unimpressed.

"How have they let it get worse? I'm thinking we haven't really learned anything in that time," he says.

Out of the 88,000 Pasifika students enrolled in schools around New Zealand in 2018, only 52 per cent attended school "regularly" - defined as more than 90 per cent of the time that they were expected to, according to data from the Ministry of Education.

The national average was 64 per cent.

A spokeswoman for the ministry says parents are primarily responsible for making their children go to school, but Gaugatao reckons teachers need to better understand the dissonance between school life and home life for many Pasifika students.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

As Dan Bobkoff reports in Business Insider's new podcast, "Household Name," the church service mixes Catholicism with a local religion, and it's said that parishioners at the church believe that burping purges evil from the soul. And, well, Coke makes you burp. Read more

He said some other political parties are engaging preachers in campaigns and also electing them as proposed candidates but this will not happen in the FijiFirst party.

"To see a talatala (church minister) talking or backing a political party, I would not want any talatala to be involved with politics in my FijiFirst party, I want talatalas to be independent to do what they are supposed to do."

The president of the Methodist Church, Epineri Vakadewavosa, told FBC News that Fijians had the right to support a party of their choice but this should not be practised within church premises.

Methodist ministers could join a political party only if they first resigned from the church, Vakadewavosa said.

The PM says Fijians have every right to support any political party but it's inappropriate to mix religion with politics.

Speaking at a Devi Pooja (act of worship to the Goddess Devi) celebration at the Mahadevi Temple in Nausori last week, Bainimarama said that some parties and candidates encourage people to vote along religious or ethnic lines in the coming national elections.

The prime minister said this is wrong as it's a backward way of thinking and risks the unity that society has built.

"As I said in the Ba Provincial Council Meeting just last month, religion and ethnicity should never be exploited to sow division and hate.

"This is fundamentally against the very nature of not only any religion but of our very democracy."

Bainimarama said Fijians will benefit when values-based organisations work in conjunction with the government regardless of ethnicity, background or faith.

Source

• amp.rnz.co.nz
• fijisun.com.fj
• fbc.com.fj
• Image: youtube.com

"A common sign of this secularization is the emergence of social, political, and economical spheres in which religious influence is declining."

Boniface says the Papua New Guinea constitution has two pints of reference: ‘our noble traditions' and ‘the Christian principles'.

"The question is what happened to those noble traditions and the Christian principles since the time when European culture and civilization met the people of PNG?"

He says when a culture/civilization meets another culture/civilization changes will take place and there is the danger that the dominated society gets disorientated because of all the changes; that it loses its bearings.

Source

• wantokniuspepa.com
• Image: materialworldblog.com